ISSUES AND CONCERNS ಸಮಸ್ಯೆಗಳ ಮೇಲೆ ಕ್ಷಕಿರಣ

The Intolerant Indian: Why we must rediscover a liberal space Dr. M. V. Kamath One thing can be said of Indians: They attract attention, even if not necessarily positive. All the years down from Macaulay (1800-1859) to Katherine Mayo to Churchill to our present times, writers and commentators have written enough to damn Indians to perdition. For Churchill, Indians were a “beastly people with a beastly religion”. Katherine Mayo almost dismissed India as a despicable country. In recent times Indians have been described as ‘impossible’ and – glory be! –‘talkative’ and ‘argumentative’. Now we have been endowed by another writer – an Indian, if you please! – with the epithet ‘intolerant’. No doubt his work will be hailed by intellectuals as the ultimate truth. Gautam Adhikari, needless to say, has all the qualifications to see India through western eyes. He is a FICCI Fellow at the East West Centre in Washington DC, an Adjunct Lecturer at Harvard and also a Fellow at George Washington Unive...

Friends Yet another Independence Day came and went into the inanimate pages of history as one more event in this country of myriad dimensions. Yes, India has turned 64. How have we Indians, born around - this time 64 year ago - Aug. 1947, look back at the chequered path, the labyrinth our socio-economic and political life has taken us. Indians were less than 350 millions on 15th Aug. 1947, and to-day we are more than 3 folds at 1200 million, competing with China, to dethrone the Asian giant as the country with largest population in the world. But our Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh or the President Pratibha Patil in their long address to the nation, on account of Independence Day celebration did not mention the issue of population explosion the country is experiencing. Prime Minister, in his opening lines itself spoke of “we have to banish poverty and illiteracy from our country. We have to provide the common man with access to improved health-services. We have to provide employment ...

INDIA @ 64 - The Year of Scams “Over 6 lakh teachers failed in qualifying exam held by CBSE”, was headline of a small piece of news reported in the left hand corner of the 9th page of a Mumbai based English daily. The report stated that, the first-ever Central Teacher Eligibility Test (CTET) was held in Nagpur to be a bench mark for new teacher appointments for CBSE schools. The results, however, were shockingly dismal with 86% candidates failing the test across the country. Reportedly close to 7,10,000 candidates appeared for the exam but not even 98000 managed to pass, which is not even 14%. This CTET was probably held some time in July 2011. So for 64 years, we had teachers teaching in Central Board of Secondary Education who were dismally incompetent and patently unqualified to be teachers. And CBSE schools are believed to be better than vernacular medium government or municipal or panchayat run schools. But all these schools were manned by apparently qualified teachers and they w...

GANG LEADER FOR A DAY The Hustler and the Hustled I was nervous about teaching the workshop, but I was also eager. My relationship with tenants up to this point had largely been a one-way street; after all this time in Robert Taylor, I felt as though I should give something back. On a few occasions, I had managed to solicit donations from my professors, fifty or a hundred dollars, for some kind of program in the neighbourhood. This money might do a great deal of good, but it seemed to me a fairly impersonal way of helping. I was hoping to do something more direct. In the past I hadn’t been drawn to standard charitable activities like coaching basketball or volunteering at a school, because I wanted to differentiate myself from the people who helped families and ran programs in the community. I had heard many tenants criticize the patronizing attitudes of such volunteers. The writing workshop, however, seemed like a good fit. Having hung out in the community for several years, I believ...

Can an individual be without any representative character? P. M. Kamath A common refrain that is heard in Congress circles, while referring to civil society, to undermine their importance, is to refer to them as “four or five self-proclaimed civil society representatives.” This suggests these members of group that is demanding action against corruption and seeking the establishment of Jan Lokpal absolutely have no public support at all. The only elected representative can claim to speak for the general public. My single purpose in this article is to show, how wrong this formulation of the Congress critics of current public demand for a Jan Lokpal at the Centre and Lokayuktas at the state levels. The Congress refrain reminds me a brief meeting I had with former Prime Minister, late Shri Morarji Desai at his residence in Marine drive. By then having taught subjects like foreign policy, strategy, national security, international politics, American foreign policy, at postgraduate level and...

Tax Evasion Pak style Lahore: Pakistan’s cricketer-turned-politician Imran Khan has claimed that President Asif Ali Zardari, Chief Ministers of three provinces and 61 percent of MP’s have never paid any taxes, reflecting the widespread corruption in the country. Khan alleged that Zardari and former Premier Nawaz Sharif were hand in glove. While Sharif had paid only Rs 5,000 as tax. Zardari paid no tax, he claimed. About 61 percent of Pakistan’s parliamentarians and Chief Ministers of three provinces have also never paid any taxes, he claimed. Khan appealed to the Supreme Court to open a case filed by former Air Force Chief Asghar Khan so that the nation could know how much money politicians had received from an intelligence agency, which he did not identify. He also asked Sharif to return 3.5 million that he had allegedly received from an intelligence agency. “Sharif had convinced me to boycott the 2008 election but then he could not keep his own word and went for the polls,” he said. ...

Super tomatoes that can combat cancer London: British researchers claim to have developed new “super tomatoes” fortified with minerals which can improve your immune system and help prevent cancer. The new varieties, which have hit shelves across the UK, have been enriched with selenium, a powerful anti-oxidant which the researchers believe could not only boost the immune system but also help prevent cancer. The mineral, found naturally in foods, such as Brazil nuts, shellfish and liver, is also important for the thyroid gland, which determines how quickly the body uses energy and also produces proteins, the Daily Mail reported. Food scientists for Marks & Spencer, the company which has developed the new variety, turned their attention to the mineral because it is lacking in UK diets. Low concentrations in farm soil mean little of the mineral finds its way into home-grown foods. There is evidence that a deficiency may lead to heart disease and, while it does not tend to directly cau...